mattsp.com

I'm a video game graphics programmer currently working at Ubisoft Toronto on Splinter Cell. I've worked in the games industry for 9 years, shipped 6 console titles, including the newest Medal of Honor and Shape, a Kinect game. Prior to that I worked 2 years in the computer & electrical engineering industry.

I'm originally from the East Coast of Canada but spent my youth in Quebec City. When I was 18 I moved to Ontario to study at the University of Waterloo. After 7 years of study and 6 internships in cities around North America, I moved to Toronto and got my first game job. Since then I have lived in Los Angeles, Montreal and London.

I'm currently working on Splinter Cell at Ubisoft Toronto, a new studio. I was the first graphics programmer who joined and glad I did. The team is pleasant to work with, the technology solid, the management more organized than Rome, and the renderer is the most intricate one I've used. Before I joined this studio, I was working at Ubisoft Montreal on a Kinect launch title called "Your Shape". Making a fitness game was a change after having worked on four shooters! The project was very profitable to the point that management doubled our bonus target!

At Electronic Arts Los Angeles, I worked on Medal Of Honor as a graphics and systems programmer. The LA studio was fantastic, the area, a small paradise.

At Digital Extremes London I worked on the Evolution engine while developing the game DarkSector on both Playstation3 and Xbox360. The amount of work we did with the numberof programmers we were is impressive.

At Digital Extremes Toronto, I worked on two Xbox games. The graphics were very good for the time. We were a handful of programmers and a dozen artists. People had colorful personalities and I see this time as the golden days, even if the products we made weren't the best. It was a time of learning: Unreal, the XBox, my first shader.

The main task I was assigned was to make an in-game editor, which let you modify maps, for example, warping the terrain, adding objects, and sharing the map on XBox live. It got some attention and some positive reviews. This was my first game programming task. So much did the Padawan learn since then, so much.